The lighting of a scene may affect the colors of an image. For example, fluorescent lighting may cause a blue or cool cast in an image, and incandescent lighting may cause a yellow or warm cast in an image. As a result, an image may include tinting such that image colors may be skewed toward a specific color. For example, blue tinting may include colors skewing towards a blue color.
A device may use automatic white balancing to compensate for lighting temperature effects (such as tinting) in a captured image. A white balance setting may attempt to determine a difference between an observed white color and an estimated white color for a portion of an image to adjust all color values in the image. For example, a device may determine a white balance setting that is used to remove tinting (such as a blue, red, or green tint) from neutral colors (such as grays and whites) in an image, and the white balance setting may be applied to the entire image.
Automatic white balancing is a power consuming process, particularly determining a white balance setting for each image received at the device during preview mode.